Remembering David Binns

From Barbara Binns:

Dave’s parents were born in Jamaica but met in New York when they moved there as young adults.  After they married, they took jobs for a wealthy family in New York’s Hudson Valley as cook and butler.  Dave remembers crawling on the plush carpets and playing on the lush green lawns.  His sister Haidee was 16 years older than him and went to school with the rich kids of the area.

Dave was a mistake coming later in his parent’s lives.  The couple they worked for treated them like family. David never forgave his folks for moving to the Bronx when he was five or six, to get better jobs.  As a man of color, his Dad had a hard time finding a job.  He worked once as an elevator operator, but because of his color, he could only work the freight elevator.  Eventually, his Dad was able to buy a Taxi medallion to drive a cab which he did till retirement.  Haidee, much older than Dave was more of a mother to him.  She was a librarian and took her little brother to museums and brought books home to read. He loved mysteries, particularly Sherlock Holmes.  They lived in a mixed neighborhood. He hung out with Irish, Spanish, Italian, and Puerto Rican kids. Then, everyone but the Puerto Ricans moved to the suburbs.  He loved the Puerto Rican culture, the food, and the music, especially Tito Puente.  And he went to lots of dance venues in the city—salsa and swing.

As a Jamaican with kinky hair he never really felt like he belonged to any group.

When he was a teenager Haidee left home. When Dave turned 18, he joined the Navy. On his first voyage, he got really seasick and told his commanding officer that the Navy wasn’t for him and he would like to resign.  They, of course, told him he couldn’t do that but he could switch to the Army, which he did and spent the next 3 years in Germany happily driving a water purification truck and drinking in German bars. 

When he came home to the Bronx he met and married a Central American girl and got a job in a bank.  He started smoking marijuana and then moved to heroin.  After he sold his wife’s wedding ring for drugs, she walked out.  Smart girl!  He continued working, going to college at night and using heroin for a few years until it caught up with him. I think he lost his job and was pretty strung out.  His dad had been talking to a cousin who was a doctor in LA.  Carly told his dad about Synanon so his father bought him a ticket to Los Angeles where Carly took him to Synanon and dropped him off.  What followed was a tough interview with Gary McDaniels and he was in.  He was knocked out at the beauty of the Del Mar Beach Club in Santa Monica—right on the water with a huge sandy beach.  And he saw people he knew from the street, clean and seemingly pretty happy.  Synanon literally blew his mind.  He did well in Synanon, becoming the accounting manager, under the tutelage of Marty Rubenstein, CPA, and Dave eventually became Treasurer of Synanon.

I worked for Dave for years before we got together romantically.  He was a great friend and fun to hang out with.  So he’s been a big part of my life for 50 years, 40 of those married to him. 

This brings us to 1990 and our move to San Diego after Synanon came to an end. My daughter Jennifer was here in San Diego pregnant with my first grandchild.  Dave knew I wanted desperately to be around her and he knew that Good Source, a company formed in Synanon by Bob Salkin, was purchased by Bob and a handful of other investors was relocating to San Diego.  Dave had been working for Marty Rubenstein and Good Source was one of his clients that Dave did the accounting for.  He also knew as Synanon was ending, that my job with the foundation was also ending.  Bob had a bookkeeper who was leaving the company so Dave told Bob that I could do what she did plus the accounting Dave had been doing for him.  Bob hired me and Marty fired Dave, understandably since he had lost a big client.  Dave found an accounting job down the hill in Visalia working for an agricultural guy that Sid Frank knew but it required buying a car and traveling to Visalia seven days a week for awhile until we moved down to San Diego.  He got me my dream job at a great sacrifice to him.  He could have that job.  What a wonderful thing he did for me! He got a job pretty quickly in SD working as controller for Avram Ninyo of Ninyo and Moore.  That turned out to be a great job that lasted until he retired from full-time work in 2016.

So much to say about my sweet Dave.  Unfortunately, after a policy of sobriety for many years, Synanon unfortunately introduced alcohol into the lifestyle.  Basically, the founder had been a drunk before he started Synanon and he wanted to drink again.  That was a majorly bad decision for people like Dave.  So when Synanon ended and we moved to San Diego, Dave struggled with a drinking problem for years until a bout with pancreatitis eight years ago made it clear that he had to stop. To his credit, he never had a sip of alcohol after that.  This is where the great relationships formed in Synanon helped so much  Dave started a men’s group with his friends that met once a month which benefited him and everyone else too.  I had so much respect for the way he handled that.  Just another example of what a strong person he was.

He was a great partner throughout the years.  He did the laundry every Sunday, watching sports. He was such a great dancer and loved the salsa and swing, particularly.  He was funny—so funny and irreverent.  It’s almost unbearable missing his humor and advice.  He was very wise and thoughtful, so much so that our granddaughter Jordan dubbed him our little Buddha.  You always wanted Dave’s opinion.  He read books on spirituality and loved Ekhert Tolle, among others, especially his fave Emmet Fox, someone he first discovered in Synanon and kept reading.  In the last few years, he was in a guy’s meditation group which he truly loved

He loved our blended family—he had such a special relationship with the kids and grandkids.  He was a guy who never lost his keys or left his wallet anywhere, never ran out of gas or his high blood pressure medicine, or his chocolates or dental floss.  Whenever I was not going to be around for dinner, after he asked me where I was going, his next question would be “What am I going to eat?”   He was a very careful guy, a plan-ahead kind of guy. Since I’m not that way, whenever I leave the house now, I hear him in my head asking “Do you have your phone, keys, wallet?”  I actually answer him out loud: “Yes, Davey I do”.

one of the most adorable things about him was his relationship with money.  He was very good with money and to be honest, if left up to him, we would have had a lot more when he died, but I’m more of a carpe diem sort.  It took a while, but eventually, he didn’t mind that so much—we traveled, we had fun and I worked on being frugal.  I Don’t want to downplay that—we did have some pretty heated arguments in the first few years.  Once when we were first down here, he opened a credit card bill………

As a teenager, he was the treasurer of the Bronx gang he was in called the Young Sinners. Years and years ago when I met him in Synanon he had a TV which was unusual.  He explained that he had saved his $5 weekly allowance called walking around money (WAM) every week to buy a 12” Sony Trinitron television set which no one else had in those days (I think it was upwards of $200).  I couldn’t believe the kind of discipline and single-mindedness he had even as a newcomer. He carried that TV around for years until it ended up here in my kitchen in Solana Beach.  He always worked.  He always wanted money in his pocket –he liked feeling flush after growing up poor.  After he retired from his full-time job, he got one part-time job and then a second one.  He worked until a few weeks before he died when he wasn’t able to do the good work he always prided himself on.  His hobbies reflected his frugality: running which required no equipment except running shoes and hiking which was also free and swimming and boogeyboarding in the ocean, also free.   He ran a number of marathons, kept a running log, and was so well known for running at lunch throughout his working life.

Some folks say—‘well, our marriage wasn’t perfect, but.…’  I say our marriage was perfect—we fought, we laughed so much, we worked through some big struggles.  I always got a thrill seeing him walking toward me or knowing I was going home to him.  He was strong, like his astrology sign of a lion.  He was my knight in shining armor—always looking out for and defending me.   I couldn’t have prayed for a better man to be at my side.  I told him before he died, that the strength of his love would warm the rest of my days.

 “We had a great run, Barb.” He said,  “Everyone dies”